Karaoke Forums

Looking for a good deal, as usual. Gave my daughter my Visa Toshiba laptop and now I need a replacement. Been looking at page after page of laptops on ebay till my head is spinning.

I need a P4, 1GB of ram, 15" screen or a 17", XP or XP Pro, it would be nice if it had a built in wireless network adapter. I need this primarily to play music for my musical act. This isn't very demanding on the processor and it isn't graphics intensive.

I suppose I could use one of those small PC's, but then I would have to lug around my LCD monitor, a laptop would be more convenient, just flip it open and go. I'm trying to keep this under $600, under $500 would be better, under $400 I would be ecstatic.

http://www.usedlaptops.com/

I know someone that bought one from them and it's OK.

But count on replacing the battery soon.

I got skrewed over by usedlaptops.com, so take it what you will.

check out http://www.pricewatch.com and click on notebooks.

http://www.pricewatch.com/notebooks_with_os/

http://www.pricewatch.com/notebooks_wit ... tium_4.htm immediately jumped out at me!

If you want to add $38 to your price then check this one out. XP Pro.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product. ... ifications

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Surprising to me right now Dell is beating everyone. When I was shopping a few months ago for my daughter's laptop Dell seemed to be higher than Toshiba, HP, Compaq etc. Right now they have a basic P4 machine with 15.4" screen and XP with 1GB of ram for $429. This probably isn't the best deal in the world, but it's brand new, with a warranty, not refurbished or used, and it has a 15.4" screen instead of a 14" screen.

That Acer from Wally World is $200 more than the Dell and it has a 14" screen, it does have XP Pro though, but no way am I going to spend $200 more for a machine with a smaller screen and no way would I buy an Acer for $200 more than a comparable Dell.

The only negative I could come up with on the Dell is that it has XP Home not XP Pro. I'm not sure how negative that is, I've never used XP Home.

I'm going to look for another day or two and if I can't find a better deal, I'm pulling the trigger on the Dell. I'm willing to pay a bit more if I can get more features. I could be wrong, but I think I would be happy with a Sony, Toshiba, Compaq, HP or a Dell or even an Acer. At this point as far as I can tell, in the lower end that I'm looking at, they all are about the same quality.

I'd love to get a machine with a 17" screen, but right now price is a dominant factor in the decision. I'd even kick in another $100 for the 17", but I doubt I can find one for so little money.

One Kj I know bought a one year old Compaq form a rent to own place for $300 cash.  He used it for shows until he got hit with a power surge and had the ground lifted and fried it.

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The price difference is in the guts.  Look at the quality of the sound and video cards first.    If you use it for karaoke it will matter.

I found a good deal on a brand new Vista Home Premium Toshiba with a Pentium Dual Core, 2GB, 15.4" screen etc. at Office Depot. I'm really afraid to get a Vista computer...

Be afraid that the sound and video cards are cheap.    Hence the "good" deal.

You said XP.

I have a Creative Labs Xfi Xtreme sound card, you can buy a Behringer USB sound card at Musician's friend for like $30, I'm not worried about the sound card.

I actually saw the laptop, it's not a chessey piece of junk, the screen is excellent and it's fine for what I want to do which is to play music. It's PLENTY powerful. I'm not playing high def video or editing video or any kind of graphics work, I just want to play music, not too demanding for a computer to do. People have been and are still playing music on older less powerful machines with no problems. My only qualm is it has Vista. I'm REALLY torn and tormented between XP and Vista.

The quality or fitness of the laptop isn't in question here, the main concern is XP or Vista.

I use the XP Home Edition on all my computers: home desktop, business desktop, wife's laptop, daughter's laptop, karaoke laptop.  I don't know what the difference is between "Pro" and "Home", but I am not aware of anything these computers are "missing".

my pricing I gave for the links and stuff had NOTHING to do with what you need for karaoke. For my system, I have stuff that I bought strictly for it. The right hard drive for storage, the right burner for ripping discs, and an external sound card which I use for hooking to my mixer. I also didn't mention the vid card, nor the cabling hookup I use to convert the s-video to RCA.

You start nit-picking that stuff, then you gotta mention all the rca connections from the pc to the mixer, mixer to amp, amp to speakers, video to splitter or multi video wires...  lol sheesh!

I was responding to sidewinder and his comments regarding the sound card and graphics.

If I need a different CD/DVD burner I'll get an external Liteon, for now I've already ripped all of my discs except my 3 CAVS discs so which CD/DVD drive the laptop comes with isn't a big concern to me.

My only concern is XP vs. Vista.

Dell still offers XP on new computers.

I ordered some computers from Dell before Christmas.  I got one before and cancelled the other.  They told my i would have them both before christmas.   I don't know if they are still having shipping issues but the web site said both computers were in stock ready to ship next day.  They weren't even ready to ship next year.

I'm will never consider Dell again for a computer, but that's just me.

That Acer sells for $449.00 at Office Depot..

(Acer built computers for IBM for years.. Very High Quality..)

Too late jd, I bought a Dell laptop about 3 weeks ago. It has VISTA hone premium. Hopefully I won't have any problems. So far it's fine.

How can i tell if i have XP Home or Pro?

Right click on MY Computer, go to Properties, it will say on the first screen which is the General Tab.

I just bought a new refurbished laptop from Gateway on ebay. it wound up costing me like $430 with shipping. I got a 1800 duo centrino 124 gig of ram and an 80 gig hd. XP 15" screen. wireless network adaptor  dvd reader / writer.  this is My second gateway, only slightly faster than the first one and with a smaller hard drive. the first one was almost a grand on sale at best buy a year and a half ago. Ive never regretted buying it for a second. the refurb is basicly a brand new unit, in the box, with all the gateway paper work. used ones were selling at around $400. obviously you are subject to what they have avalible, but they had a bunch of different units on ebay when I was looking.

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